‘I’ve learnt my lesson’ – Emma Raducanu to cut down on sponsorship days

“New Year’s resolution? I don’t have one.” So said Emma Raducanu, as she held an end-of-season briefing before Friday’s flight to New Zealand. “Everything I do has to link to a deeper reason, not just be spontaneous.”

And yet, this thoughtful conversation revealed two areas in which Raducanu’s priorities have changed. The first – the hiring of experienced fitness trainer Yutaka Nakamura – we already know about. But the second – cutting down on off-court distractions – could be seen as a belated acknowledgement that her critics had a point.

“I’ve learnt how to say no a bit more,” Raducanu told reporters over lunch at the National Tennis Centre in south-west London. “Initially I felt really bad for, like, letting people down. I’d always want to do extra for whatever partner or magazine or whatever I’m shooting for. If they wanted to do another half day, I would do it and I’d fit it in around my schedule. I would put my practices early and then do that in the afternoon. But I think now I’ve learnt to put myself first a little bit more.”

Raducanu’s strikingly honest admission supported the theory that, at times, she has taken her eye off the fuzzy yellow ball since that game-changing US Open triumph. Marketed energetically by her management agency IMG, she soon accumulated nine blue-chip partners ranging from Porsche to Dior. With extra half-days on top of her contractual commitments, that is a lot of non-tennis activity.

But then, we should remember that Raducanu was only 18 at the moment when her world-shaking ace flew past Leylah Fernandez. Despite the intellectual acuity that brought her excellent A-level grades in maths and economics, she was still very far from being worldly-wise. Few teenagers would have handled her sudden rise from anonymity to celebrity without an attack of vertigo. Now, having turned 22 last month, she is reassessing her life and career with a more mature eye.

“I’m obviously very grateful and fortunate to have had certain experiences and opportunities,” Raducanu explained. “But I wasn’t prepared for it. In my head, it was just, like, ‘OK, I wake up, I play tennis, I go to the gym and I go home, and I don’t have anything else to do,’ you know? [But] after I did well, the next few years, there was so much communication about things off the court. I would always give my 100 per cent on the court. I was always working really hard. But I just think that I wasn’t prepared as well for the other things that inevitably do take some energy out of you.

“I think now I’m a lot more structured. I’ll be like: ‘OK, I have one hour where we’re going to talk about business, and now I’m going to go train for the rest of the week.’”

After three stop-start seasons, including last year’s seven-month injury lay-off, Raducanu is finally beginning to find some professional balance.

This newfound stability stems mainly from her childhood mentor Nick Cavaday, who has won her trust in a manner that her previous litany of coaches – principally Andrew Richardson, Torben Beltz, Dmitry Tursunov and Sebastian Sachs – never quite managed. Since Cavaday came back to work with her a year ago, they have improved her win-ratio from under 50 per cent to a creditable 64 this season.

But there were still a few frustrating physical setbacks, most recently the sprained foot ligaments which curtailed Raducanu’s Asian swing in the autumn. This most recent absence – which extended from her injury retirement against Daria Kasatkina in Seoul until her faultless run at last month’s Billie Jean King Cup – offered the opportunity for some deep thinking. With luck, we might eventually come to look back at October 2024 as a critical hinge-point in Raducanu’s growing self-awareness.

“After Korea, I had some good time to think,” she explained. “I was actually in China for a few days to see my grandma, and it was nice to just have some time off. And I think that was a bit of a turning point where I was just like: ‘OK, next year, what do I want for myself?’

“In that time I was really creative. I was playing the piano. I was painting. I was exploring my artistic side. But it just got me thinking. That foot injury had me, like: ‘OK, I really want to stay healthy next year, I really want to make sure that I’m consistently doing the physical stuff.’ Because every time I went on a trip this year, the fitness would inevitably take a back seat. I’d have press [commitments], tennis, whatever, and then the fitness – because I didn’t have someone able to adapt the session, it’ll just not be done.

“That’s when I was really, like: ‘OK, I want to bring someone in to come with me on the road so I can continue the physical work.’ I started looking at Yutaka and exploring that option. And then he came over for a trial a couple of months ago, and it worked really well, so that was probably a big moment where I really wanted to spend more time and energy on my fitness.”

As with the trade-off between training and photoshoots, Raducanu has taken longer than she might have to acknowledge this glaring need.

Again, though, we should err on the side of charity. For all the value of a seasoned staff member like Nakamura – a trainer whose experience of big events far outstrips Cavaday’s, for example – it can be intimidating to hire someone of that calibre when you’re still finding your feet on the tour.

‘Winning is not the primary objective’

Happily, Raducanu drew enough encouragement from this year’s 23 wins to feel like she belongs at or near the top of the game. An eye-catching run to the fourth round of Wimbledon underpinned her climb from No 301 at the start of the season to No 57 now. As a result, she will set off for Auckland – where she plans to celebrate Christmas with a beach barbecue alongside an old friend from juniors – in buoyant spirits.

Asked what motivates her, Raducanu explained that she is starting to focus on the journey, rather than the destination. “This is actually something hat has changed as I’ve learnt more in the last few years,” she said. “When I first started, my main reason was ‘I want to win a grand slam [tournament]’. And that happened so young, and I’m so grateful for it, but as soon as that happens, I’m like: ‘OK, well, I want to win another grand slam.’

“And it’s just not sustainable, because when you don’t win another grand slam straight away, you get frustrated with that. But now, the reason I play is genuine. I really enjoy what I’m doing, how I’m working, the people I’m working with, and I just want to see how good I can be. Like, I really want to see how fast I can be, how fit I can be, how explosive, how well I can move.

“As athletes, we all want to win,” concluded Raducanu, who intends to play both Auckland and Adelaide before the Australian Open starts on Jan 12. “But that’s not the primary objective. It’s more just enjoying what I’m doing, collecting these good days of work, and just seeing how far it can go, really.”